Good Instructions For Writing A Research Paper Literature Review

If your research paper is built around a literature review, it is important that you have a good knowledge of what literature review is all about and the aim of writing such paper. When you do this, it makes it easier for you to come up with a coherent write-up that your lecturer will be proud of. A literature review is geared towards confirming if you can be able to read and understand one or more published works under a given topic in your field of study. Whether this academic paper comes as a stand-alone assignment or as a section of another type of paper, you should always try to give it your best shot.

Listed below are instructions you should follow in order to come up with high-quality research paper literature review. They are as follows:

Review the paper guidelines:

You should pay attention to the style of the academic paper, usually the APA style. Pay very close attention to the margins, font and spacing. Make sure your structure and format for the title page, body of paper, citations and others conform with the required style of writing.

Choose your topic:

It will make carrying out researches for your paper and doing the actual writing easier if you choose a topic you are comfortable with. If this topic is related to the topic you will cover in your final product, much better for you.

Familiarize yourself with the literature being reviewed:

This part of writing your research paper is easy. Especially considering that with the internet, you have a whole lot of databases to browse through in order to get relevant information for your academic paper. After this, you organize the information before you resume writing.

Take notes:

This should be done as you carry out your researches and pre-writing exercises. Take note of key terms used within the literature, key statistics which could further enhance the credibility of your paper, important quotes, major trends/patterns, gaps, relationships, strengths and weaknesses in the literature should all be taken note of. In doing this, make sure you still have your focus on the main topic of your research paper.

Create outline:

With the help of the notes taken and other necessary information, you should be able to develop outline for your literature review.

Down to the main work:

This is when you start developing the content of your paper, making sure it is coherent enough. For a long review, an overview that is strategically placed near the beginning of your research paper should tell your target audience what will and won’t be covered in your work. After the body of the work, you then write your conclusion.